Reason 12: The steady rise of methane into the atmosphere from new methane releases from fracking, melting permafrost, tundra, and leaking of natural gas lines.
These things act as another major hidden and dangerous source of our global fossil-fuel reduction failure. Unfortunately, we will probably cross the carbon 600 ppm final extinction level. Crossing carbon 600 ppm will raise the average global temperature to 5°C (9 degrees Fahrenheit) and trigger massive methane clathrate releases from coastal ocean shelves.
This massive methane release has happened several times before in the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, and most notably in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, when up to 96% of all marine life species became extinct 252 million years ago. (Please click here to watch a short video that explains the extinction process brilliantly once we start releasing methane clathrate from our coastal shelves. New research shows we begin this release process once we reach 5°C, and by 6°C, it is in full bloom.)
Because methane released as a gas from methane clathrate is 86 times more potent than carbon as a temperature-increasing greenhouse gas, it will rapidly spike up the average global temperatures and eventually to extinction-accelerating levels.
Please click here to see another interactive global atmospheric methane graph. In this interactive graph, you can see the past 1,000 years of atmospheric methane levels. In addition, you can see how total atmospheric methane levels from all sources have exponentially skyrocketed, particularly during the last 50 years. (We strongly recommend that you take a few moments and review this powerful methane graph. If you are a tech person, its underlying documentation is also available.)
If methane continues to rise to push us toward the carbon 600 ppm tipping point and an average global temperature of 5°C, it will eventually bring about the extinction of humanity and the end of civilization as we know it.
(Please note: The fracking industry also has a concerted political effort to prevent the accurate measurement of total methane in the atmosphere to keep their growing methane release amounts hidden from the public.) When you add the effects of methane (measured in part as CO2e) for raising our global temperature along with the impact of rising atmospheric carbon, we are probably already well above our current carbon 421 ppm [around 450 CO2e+].)
Reason 13: We have a near insolvable problem regarding a fair and internationally recognized climate change justice definition and a fair climate change restitution and climate aid processes. In general, the industrialized, northernmost countries of the world have produced the most atmospheric carbon causing global warming and its many consequences. The northern industrial countries have also created most of the global warming consequences for the developing world.
In the illustration below, most developing nations are located between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south. Ironically, the northern industrialized nations that have predominantly caused the global warming problem will often also temporarily benefit from the changes global warming creates to the climate in their countries.
The northern nations, who are also most responsible for the most global warming harm caused to the developing world, are unfairly resisting paying for the damages they have done to these nations. Yet, at the same time, the northern nations are also fighting taking in the millions (or the coming billions) of new global warming climate refugees (aka climagees.)
In the following illustration, the lands above the 45th parallel north and below the 50th parallel (above the orange line at the top of the image.) are where most of the human population will have to migrate as global warming continues to accelerate.
The developed nations do not want to pay fair and just damages to the developing nations. There are also no international standards for enforceable justice for the undeveloped world to obtain restitution for the damages the developed world has done to it. This absence is because there is no global standard definition for climate justice or responsibility for ecological or atmospheric damage.
With no definition of ecological, atmospheric justice, and responsibility, it will be impossible for the developing world to receive what it should be paid from the developed world. Additionally, the definition of justice and accountability worldwide changes in different nations and varies in other cultures, religions, and ethnicities.
Coming to a standard definition of climate justice and responsibility on who pays fairly for the global warming damage they have caused will likely never fully happen. However, as an ongoing sign of this injustice, the developed world has not even paid the previously agreed upon (and grossly inadequate) amounts they agreed to pay to the developing world in previous global warming agreements.
This justice issue is highly relevant to resolving the climate change emergency. It is a massive problem because the developed world most likely will never pay fair and adequate restitution (or give adequate assistance) to the developing world for the damage the developed world has caused.
This is because:
a. those restitution costs are not paid just once. They will continue to rise exponentially as global warming accelerates. Damages to the developing countries will run into hundreds of trillions of dollars.
b. developed countries will need all of their financial resources to survive and keep up with their ongoing climate catastrophes. And because of
c. inherent known and implicit biases against the cultures, religions, or ethnicities of the developing world by the developed world.
Because of many of the same reasons, developed nations will also not provide adequate funding to assist the developing world in rapidly transitioning from fossil fuel energy generation to green energy generation and fossil fuel use to green energy use. This also means the developed nations will first use their resources to convert their countries to green energy generation. While at the same time, the developing nations will not have adequate funding to do the same.
This ultimately means that the developing world, where most of its population now lives, will have to continue using fossil fuels at ever-increasing levels as their nations grow. This lack of care for the developing world means we will not be able to stop the global warming extinction emergency and its coming catastrophes because most of the world will not be part of the solution.
Reason 14: Our governments are not even close to mass-mobilizing all of the needed human, financial and other resources required to achieve or come even close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, and we are almost out of time.
Individual actions alone, not even if done by hundreds of millions of us, will not bring us close to the 2025 global reduction target levels. Only a massive global mobilization done and led by our governments can work if we hope to even come close to the 2025 targets. It must be completed with a Manhattan Project or World War II mass mobilization-like urgency. (The Manhattan Project was the highest priority research and development undertaking during World War II. It produced the US's first nuclear weapons in just four years. No expense or resource was denied to this most senior project.)
Without the following actions being done with the urgency of a Manhattan-like project or WWII-like mass mobilization by almost ALL world governments, there is little to no realistic hope we can avoid a mass extinction of most of humanity by or before mid-century.
Reason 15: No nation, organization, or individual is actually "driving" the global governance "car" to remedy climate change on a worldwide scale.
We do not have an effective global government or governance (a car without a driver) overseeing the well-being of humanity and the Earth's systems as a whole. Instead, what we have now is competing nations seeking their own selfish best interests most frequently at the expense of other countries, peoples, and the environment.
One does not have to be a genius to know a car in motion without a driver will always eventually crash!
It is unlikely that we will establish a valid global government or some other form of effective global governance with legislative, executive, and judicial powers working for ALL humanity within the next 3-5 decades, if ever. Consequently, it is nearly certain that will we not get all of the needed global warming extinction prevention actions listed in Part 3 of the Job One Plan done in time. Consequently, without effective global government, the "car" of humanity will crash and go over the carbon 425-450 ppm climate change extinction tipping point.
Reason 16: If governments try to enforce the correct, painful and radical 2025 global fossil fuel reductions now needed, people will rebel, and those governments will soon be overthrown or collapse.
Today's modern governments are built on the massive use of fossil fuels at almost every level of their day-to-day functionality. Several things would happen if today's developing governments cut their total fossil use by 75% before 2025 to meet the 2025 extinction-critical reduction levels. First, their military forces, which run on fossil fuels, would be near completely incapacitated. (No government would ever cripple its military in our dangerous world.)
Second, their citizens would also revolt and overthrow the government. This revolt would occur because enforcing the 2025 targets would starve to death or cause sudden severe pain to so many that they would riot and remove all politicians who voted for them.
Reason 17: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is still distracting our leaders and resources from the escalating climate emergency.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which is expected to be a problem in its various mutations worldwide until about 2023-2025, presents a unique set of issues for reducing global fossil fuel use to get close to the 2025 targets. Unfortunately, many people are so preoccupied with pandemic precautions and limitations that most global warming public protest actions have been significantly reduced during the pandemic.
Economies have also dropped in many countries, and more people are concerned about eating their next meal, losing their jobs, or being evicted. As a result, there is little bandwidth left for the slower-moving yet far worse global warming extinction emergency.
Reducing fossil fuels enough during the pandemic to get close to the 2025 global targets will continue to push the global economy into a deeper hole. However, few politicians would support significantly worsening the economy when it has already been hit hard. Moreover, no one is sure how long it will take to recover from our Covid mutations and variants.
Think about our history here. We did not prepare for or prevent the global spread of COVID-19 when our best scientists explicitly told us repeatedly precisely how to do that decades ago. So how are we ever going to manage the consequences of the far worse climate emergency that our scientists have warned us about for over 40 years?
How are we ever going to get people to radically reduce their fossil fuel use to prevent something from occurring slowly and invisibly over decades when we can't even get a significant portion of the population in well-educated countries to get a proven Covid vaccine despite seeing thousands of people dying horrible deaths in their nation's hospitals in the media.
We see ongoing resistance from about 20-30% of the global population to getting a Covid vaccine that takes little time, resources, or suffering. So how will we ever convince the world they will need to make enormous painful sacrifices that will last for decades and cause them consistent and immense discomfort? But unfortunately, that is precisely what we must do if we are ever to get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
Reason 18: We face a continual unstoppable increase in average global warming temperature due to increased global fossil fuel use because of our ever-increasing global population. Because of the laws of physics concerning adding new atmospheric greenhouse gases like carbon, global temperature will continue to rise as we keep adding more carbon particles into the atmosphere. Adding three (or more) carbon ppm per year for the next 30-50 or more years (as we are doing now) does not include adding any other annual carbon ppm amounts for the additional energy used as the human population continues to soar from 7 to 9-11 billion people. That three-carbon ppm per year also does not include many more people in the developing world who will soon move into the middle class, demanding the same high fossil fuel comforts of the developed world. This nearly doubling population and the massive increase in new middle-class energy demand could increase current global fossil fuel use by another 25 to 40%.
When you look down the road 30-50 years from now and add only the additional 90-150 carbon ppm to our most current carbon 421 ppm total, it is easy to see there is no way for us to keep from crossing the carbon 500 ppm next extinction tipping point. (We are averaging an additional 3 ppm of carbon each year. 30 x 3 = 90 and 50 x 3 = 150. Below there will be more about the lasting effects of atmospheric carbon levels at or above the carbon 500 ppm level or at or beyond the carbon 600 ppm tipping point extinction level.)
Reason 19: Green energy generation will not save us in time or prevent us from going over critical extinction level tipping points. This failure of green energy scaling is because it will take far too long to produce enough green energy generation to replace all or most of the energy produced by fossil fuel energy generation. This failure is critical because we only have until 2025 to hit the required global fossil fuel reductions to save us from extinction.
Over-hyping how fast green energy generation will replace fossil fuels energy generation is a near-universal illusion held by many individuals and environmental organizations alike. For the facts on this near-universal global warming illusion involving green energy, please see this Massechutes Institute of Technology (MIT) study to verify we are a long, long way (about 400 years by MIT's estimates) from replacing most fossil fuel energy generation with green energy generation. Furthermore, the projected actual length of time it will take to move away from global fossil fuel energy generation to green energy generation to replace it.
This new information means that any realistic hope for a fast transition (in less than 50-100+ years) to full green energy generation to replace all fossil fuel energy generation is entirely unrealistic. Much of humanity will be long gone before the complete green energy generation revolution takes hold.
Reason 20: The promised other new "miracle" technologies like carbon capture and geoengineering will not save us before it is too late! Some of you may hear the news that global warming is out of our control and think, "aren't they working on inventions that will suck the fossil fuel burning carbon particles out of the atmosphere in time to save us?" If you think this is our easy out and solution to continue fossil fuel burning as "business as usual," please click here.
You can read why the currently nonexistent carbon capture technology is a silicon valley and techno-optimism delusion that will not save us in time. You will also learn why carbon capture technology is a mathematical and physical near impossibility.
Today you find carbon capture technology being forwarded primarily by impatient, profit-hungry entrepreneurs and mechanical engineers looking to make billions on the greatest catastrophe of human history.
In summary, believing that atmospheric carbon capture schemes will save us at the last minute from our ill-advised actions (instead of changing our fossil fuel-intensive lifestyles and behaviors) is equivalent to believing in magical carbon-sucking unicorns.
Reason 21: Accelerating global warming is not our only major global emergency! Eleven other major global emergencies will interact with global warming and continue to draw the needed human and financial resources away from resolving the global warming emergency. Click here to read about these other 11 major global emergencies and how they will interact with global warming, making it far harder to solve.
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